Where the mountains sail

Movie
German title	Where the mountains sail
Original title	Hvor bjergene sejler
Country of production	Denmark
original language	Danish ; Greenlandic
Publishing year	1955
length	55 minutes
Age rating	FSK 6
Rod
Director	Bjarne Henning-Jensen
script	Bjarne Henning-Jensen
production	Ministerial Filmudvalg and Arnø Studio
music	Herman D. Koppel
camera	George Dudgeon-Stretton and Werner Hedman
occupation
	Lars Henning-Jensen : Narrator

Where the mountains sail is a Danish color film from 1955.

action

Somewhere on the Greenland coast, the first-person narrator, Mikisoq, a little boy, lives with his parents, sister and grandfather in a peat hut. It's winter, the father and Mikisoq shoot a seal and bring it home by dog sled. It will be a feast for the family and all neighbors. The sled dogs also get their share.

When spring came, the mother died of tuberculosis . The father wants to hunt a seal on the fjord , but the noise of a fishing boat drives the prey away. It is becoming more and more difficult to catch seals as the sea temperature has risen.

Mikisoq is now also suffering from tuberculosis. He is picked up by the doctor's boat and taken to the hospital for the summer on a boat trip to Ilulissat lasting several days . He experiences city life full of amazement and admiration: water pipes, trucks, piles of wood, telephone and his own bed. One of his roommates is from Qasigiannguit. His mother grows crabs in a canning factory. Another comes from Sisimiut , where his father works in a shipyard. The third roommate is from Qullissat . His father works in the local coal mine.

Mikisoq sends goods home and tells his father about the possibility of moving into town and getting a house provided by the commune. While the house is being built, he has now recovered and worked as a messenger and got to know the city even better.

Finally, Mikisoq returns home to pick up his family and belongings. But the grandfather doesn't want to go into town. He is too old to start a new life elsewhere. As the sun sets, he kayaks out onto the fjord.

Awards and nominations

The film won the Gran premio della Mostra del film documentario at the Venice Biennale in 1955.

In 1956 he received the Bodil in the Bedste documentary category .

The following year he was nominated for an Oscar in the category of best documentary . ( Qivitoq was another Danish film that set in Greenland and was also nominated for an Oscar in 1957.)

In addition, the film won the prize for the best documentary film at the 6th Culture and Documentary Film Week in Mannheim in 1957.

criticism

Bent Ousager criticized various aspects of the film in Jyllands-Posten on February 22, 1956, for example that a Danish boy with a Copenhagen dialect is the first-person narrator, but also that a child's perspective was chosen at all. Greenlanders are presented as clown numbers and the description of the mother's funeral is both jaded and anachronistic . The narrator in the film claims that she was buried under the big stone behind the house. It looks as if the body had been removed and not buried, although the Christian funeral rite has been followed in Greenland since the mid-18th century. Ousager also finds the portrayal of the city euphemistic. Their dark sides, the social misery are not shown, but the move to the city as a necessary condition for the further development of the country.

In 2013, Arine Kirstein Høgel concluded that Where the Mountains Sail was a typical 1950s film about Greenland, in which the land was portrayed as a natural part of Denmark. Greenland was assimilated in the Danish constitution in 1953. The film is of the opinion that Danish colonization improves the living conditions of the average Greenlander. She wrote that the film was a successful drama documentary that was also well received in theaters . At the same time, he is also a "bad example of how the supposed realism of documentary films can benefit propaganda and cultural imperialism".

production

Bjarne Henning-Jensen's son, Lars Henning-Jensen, born in 1943, acted as narrator for both the Danish and the English versions .

The supporting film was the documentary Ballettens Børn , directed by Astrid Henning-Jensen , Bjarne's wife.

1983 version

In 1983 Bjarne Henning-Jensen published a version without a narrative voice. According to Arine Kirstein Høgel, a picture book film remained, but it had lost its raison d'etre. Because the narrative made the context. In contrast to the original, the 1983 version is only 48 minutes long.